The tragic tale behind Billy Joel’s most heartbreaking song
While Billy Joel is perhaps best remembered for his more jubilant songs in a piano rock style, it’s no secret that the New York singer-songwriter has always known how to create a heartbreaking ballad.
Though many of these deal with the themes of love and loss, there’s one song from early on in his career that has always stood out for how starkly different it is in its mood, and how its overarching theme will do its best to tug at the heartstrings of the listener.
In 1970, Joel had come to the end of his time in the duo Attila, a much-maligned project that has always been the subject of critical derision for its over-the-top theatrics and forced psychedelic hard rock stylings. It’s a far cry from the brilliance that Joel would go on to deliver later in his career, but seeing this come to such an abrupt end at the same time as having his romantic life fall apart was a tough combination of events for Joel to have to overcome.
Shortly after this series of events, Joel would attempt to take his own life by consuming an entire bottle of furniture polish, and while he survived the attempt, he would have to spend an extended period of time in the hospital recovering from the incident. He would go on to channel the anguish and despair he felt at the time to inspire him to write one of the most heart-wrenching tracks from his debut solo album, Cold Spring Harbor.
Understanding Billy Joel’s most personal song
‘Tomorrow is Today’ is perhaps the bleakest song in Joel’s entire catalogue as a result of its tragic backstory, and features plenty of lines where Joel ruminates on whether there’s any point of going on with life considering the hardships he’s facing.
With lines often referring to how every day is the same using the title as a means of illustrating it, he uses lines such as “I don’t have to see tomorrow / Because I saw it yesterday” to show just how he feels, with other lines like “I’ve seen a lot of life / And I’m damn sick of living it” being far more direct in their approach.
While Cold Spring Harbor didn’t receive a great amount of attention when it was initially released, with it only being praised retrospectively after the success of Piano Man in 1973, many praised Joel for how he handled such dark and tragic subject matter in the song itself. However, not everyone was initially receptive to the song, as when he played the original masters to his friends, it had rendered his voice much more high-pitched than normal, which caused his peers to laugh it all off as a novelty.
Joel’s reaction at the time was one of disgust and disappointment, but his reflections on the track these days come more from a place of embarrassment. Speaking to SiriusXM in 2016, he said of the record: “When you’re that age, you’re going from adolescence into adulthood. You become so self-absorbed that your head can literally go up your ass, and you gotta pull it out ’cause if you stay there too long, it’s not a good atmosphere. It’s a very self-pitying song. I actually rarely go back to that album and listen to that.”
However, this wasn’t the only time Joel covered themes of suicide in song, and his 1985 track ‘You’re Only Human (Second Wind)’ has a much more positive message to offer rather than outright despondency, with him having written the song as a way of encouraging young people not to give up and succumb to the dark thoughts you might be having.
